Folks - for your info. If you have Starry Night Pro or The Sky and you're into imaging, a free planning tool has just been released:
acp4.dc3.com/planner.html
I haven't tried it yet but since ACP has such a good name, its bound to be OK. Without the ACP software (which will do all the tasks you request automatically), I'm not sure if you just print out the schedule and manually slew, image, slew, image, park etc....
Thought it might be of interest to some of the folks here...
Cheers
Dave McD
DC-3 Dreams, SP announces a new FREE tool for planning observing
sessions for astro-imaging and science.
"ACP Plannerâ„¢ (Patent Pending) gives you a visual way to create a
night's MULTI-TARGET observing plan WITHIN Starry Night Pro 5 or
TheSky 6. This way of planning is a quantum leap beyond other
tools and automation systems because it lets you visualize your
target positions and image/filter timing together, making it
easy to pick which targets to image at what times and for how
long. You get continuous visual feedback of the time slots and
gaps.
Though it is geared to ACP owners and remote/web users, ACP
Planner can be used with other multi-target automation tools. It
really shines with ACP, though, because there's no need to tell
ACP to slew, take images, focus, guide, flip, calibrate, etc.
It's smart enough to figure out what things are needed and when."
